Podcast Summaries

Hello, thank you for staying. You all know me, but I'll tell you a little bit about myself and why I'm sitting here talking to you about domestic abuse. So in my job, I am the strategic lead for how housing responds to domestic abuse for the county. I have had an interest in kind of women's rights pretty much my whole life, because it's probably safe to say. I have a PhD that explored some issues around gender identity, and I've kind of carried that through into my professional work. I'm also a survivor of male violence, so I have had multiple past experiences of violence from men. So I bring that into my work as well. So just to kind of explain what this session is going to cover, we're going to look initially about what domestic abuse is. We are going to then look at the church and domestic abuse, and we're going to finish up with a little bit of kind of thinking around how do we respond, and a bit of a kind of action call in terms of what does GVC look like as a safe space for people that have experienced gender-based violence. So this is a really difficult topic to deal with, so this session may contain things that are re-traumatising if you've had experiences in your life. Just even if you haven't had those experiences, it is an upsetting topic. So please take care of yourselves. If you need to leave, please feel free to leave. You are not expected to share anything. There are kind of discussion points, but please don't feel like you need to share anything in that that you don't feel safe and comfortable to do so. And if we can just be mindful about the language that we use, so some of the stuff we'll talk about today is kind of how victims often internalise the way that they think the world is going to perceive them. So the way that often narratives focus on what victims have done rather than what perpetrators of violence have done. And I am happy to talk to anybody about this topic, and we lead with prayer in this church, so if this is something that you would like to be prayed for about, then that is always an option. I'm going to start with some just explanations about how I'm going to talk about domestic abuse today. So I will be using language that is gendered. So I will also be using terms such as victim, survivor, perpetrator, and person who causes harm. Now the victim-perpetrator thing, I acknowledge, is from our kind of criminal justice system, so from our police response, from our courts. And I think it's really important to say from the start that whilst we're using these labels and people will apply those labels to themselves or to others differently, actually we are talking about people with these labels. No, sorry, I need to scroll. So I will be using gendered language. I will predominantly talk about victims as women and perpetrators as men. And it's really important to say from the start that that is not to discount the fact that women can perpetrate abuse and men can be victims of abuse. But the gendered lens is so important when we're talking about domestic abuse, and there are really kind of key differences that we need to bear in mind. So... I've lost my mouse. Is it up there? Oh. Thanks, guys. So the reason that we focus on women is because women experience higher rates of repeated victimisation. They experience higher levels of fear. They're much more likely to be seriously hurt. They're much more likely to be killed as a result of male violence compared to male victims. We also know that domestic abuse is really deeply rooted in the way that as a society there is inequality between men and women. So patriarchal structures, gender stereotypes all kind of uphold those inequalities and create barriers. So this impacts on men too. So male victims face great barriers in terms of reaching out and being able to say that they are a victim of domestic abuse. So we know that the patriarchy is harmful to men as much as it is to women. We also know that, obviously, I've been talking about men and women, and there are some people that don't identify as men or women, and domestic abuse has specific and nuanced dynamics for people that identify as non-binary or transgender, and it also has specific nuanced dynamics for people that are lesbian or gay. So the final thing to say about gender is that women's experiences of domestic abuse are also what we call intersectional. And what that means is that their experiences are embedded within those structural inequalities and will interact. So if a victim is from a minoritised community, then their experiences as a minoritised woman will intersect with the domestic abuse that they experience. So they will face greater barriers to accessing help because of their minoritised status. So we know that women who are from minoritised communities, global majority communities, will often experience domestic abuse for much longer before seeking help, and when they do seek help, they face additional barriers to getting the right help that they need. Statistically, I'm sure some of you will have heard these statistics before, so you might be familiar with the statistic that one in four women and one in six men experience domestic abuse. What we often don't hear is the statistic about how many men use harmful behaviours in their relationships. So last year, there was a study published in Australia. It was a longitudinal study, so it was a study that was completed across a period, quite a long period of time, and took kind of a national representative survey across the country. And in that study, it found that one in three men were using harmful behaviours in their relationships. So when we talk about one in four victims being women, one in six victims being men, we also need to think about how prevalent perpetration is within the community. Next, we've got some kind of reporting stats, and domestic abuse in the UK accounts for a quarter of all recorded violent crime. The police have a call about every 30 seconds that relates to domestic abuse, but we also know that it's really underreported, so less than a quarter of all domestic abuse is reported to police. So there are many, many calls that are not being made. So it's largely a kind of a hidden crime. There's many reasons for that. Many reasons why people won't want to approach the police and tell the police what they're experiencing. Part of that is about our conviction rates in this country. So 80% of people who offend by stalking people, 80% don't face any charges. And if we look at abuse that's of a sexual nature, so sexual abuse, we know that conviction rates are about 1.5%. So when you kind of hear those figures, you understand why, you know, and it's such a hard process for a victim to go through. You understand kind of why people would say, I'm not going to report to the police. It's not, it's not going to get me anywhere. It's not going to get justice. I'm not going to be protected in any way. The other thing that that sends out is a message to perpetrators that actually their behaviour doesn't have consequences. So, first topic, I'm going to have to keep an eye on time. And this is for kind of discussion. So what do you understand of domestic abuse? What is domestic abuse? How would you define it? And have you encountered any myths about it? And there's not many of us, so if any, we might as well just talk as a group.

If people feel comfortable to do that. No, so child on parent is captured within domestic abuse. It's generally a not very well understood thing because there are so many other dynamics that go into it compared to adult, but in Gloucestershire, we have had, I think a couple of years ago, we had at least two, maybe even three homicides that were adult-child to parent. And what we know about that abuse is that it is often directed at mother rather than father, although we did have a case where both mother and father were sadly killed. Okay, so we have legislation in this country that came in a few years ago now that actually gives us a definition of domestic abuse. So it steers us away from that kind of intimate relationship, which is kind of what you immediately think of with domestic abuse, and actually explains to us that domestic abuse can happen between anybody that's kind of personally connected. And if you look at the text of the legislation, it kind of sets that out really clearly. And it also gives us a kind of a list of different behaviours that would come under this. Yeah. The house is kind of inconsequential. Yes, what it doesn't cover specifically, though, is like friendship or, we know that there are horrendous things that happen in, like, between neighbours, so it doesn't cover that. It's kind of that familial setting as broad as that definition may be. So the other thing that the Domestic Abuse Act brought in really importantly was that children are finally recognised as victims in their own right, and that is not just if a child witnesses. So if a child is exposed to the impact of domestic abuse because mother or father is a victim or a perpetrator, they are classed as victims. And that really recognises the profound impact that domestic abuse has on individuals. So they might not have heard anything, they might not have seen anything, but they're likely to have a parent that is in some kind of trauma response because of what they're experiencing. And so they have status as a victim in their own right. What that generally means is they have kind of legal protections, and it also means that local authorities have a duty to be providing children with support specific to their experiences of domestic abuse. We don't quite have that in place in Gloucestershire yet, but soon, hopefully. So it's thought that one in five children are thought to be affected by domestic abuse in this country, which, quite frankly, is a really depressing statistic. Yeah. And we know the long-term life effects that having those experiences in childhood can have for individuals. So below that, we've got kind of a list of different types of behaviour that the legislation sets out as being included within the definition of domestic abuse. And some of those are pretty kind of self-explanatory. Economic abuse we often, it often gets kind of referred to as kind of financial abuse at the same time. Economic abuse really takes that kind of broader lens in terms of any kind of behaviour that has an effect on somebody's ability to kind of function in the world, really, in terms of access to resources. So it's not just about kind of control of money, but it might be control of homeownership. It might be access to transportation. It might be access to food and clothing. So it's that kind of broader economic rather than kind of just access to money or the creation of debt. At the end there, we've got other abuse. So other abuse contains things such as honour-based abuse, and I've got a slide about honour-based abuse in a bit, and other types of harmful traditional practices. So forced marriage, female genital mutilation as well, are kind of all encompassed within that other abuse term. Thankfully, government are finally going to put in place a statutory definition of honour-based abuse so that it's not lumped into that other abuse and kind of, it's already very othered as a kind of area anyway. The most important thing, if anyone takes anything away from today, the most important idea I want you to go away with is that these abusive behaviours that we're going to discuss are not the result of somebody losing control. You'll often see kind of headlines in the media that talk about jealousy or that talk about a kind of rampage or that somebody saw red, but actually they're not the result of an anger problem. They're also not caused by mental ill health or addiction issues, although these issues may increase the risk that somebody, so the risk of serious harm that takes place within domestic abuse. At the root of domestic abuse behaviour is power and control. So that's our takeaway number one, domestic abuse is about power and control. Okay, so here are some more kind of examples of different behaviours that may fall under these different headings. And the reason that I provide this is just to counter that myth that many people still hold that actually it's not that serious or it's not domestic abuse if there's no physical violence that's taken place. That myth really creates barriers and it stops many people from seeking help. The consequences of kind of psychological or emotional abuse are often far more profound, far more long lasting than the impact of physical violence. So these are just examples. There are many, many more harmful behaviours that we see people use and many of them are very subtle. Are there any on there that people aren't familiar with or want to ask a question about or anything that doesn't make sense? Yeah, I think it's where it's, the question you always have to ask is, is this causing harm? So is this kind of restricting somebody being able to function independently? So many, many people in relationships will decide how they allocate their money and their resources and different people do that in many different ways. And that doesn't necessarily mean that there is domestic abuse present. It's kind of going back to that idea of power and control. And is that person doing those things to exert their power and to have full control of that individual? But where it becomes a grey area is that, as I've said, and in like Annie's example, lots of these things are very subtle. Lots of these things are positioned as I'm taking care of you or I'm doing this in your best interests. But the next slide is about coercive control. And that's about how those patterns of behaviour build up in ways that seek to really limit a victim's ability to act in the world. So restricting their kind of agency to act autonomously. And there's often rules that come with that. So you must spend the money in this way. You must go to this shop. If you don't get these things right, then there are implicit consequences. And that's really kind of how coercive control works. So it is, as it says there, a strategic course of conduct and will often include all those different types of abusive behaviour that we've just seen on the screen before. But this helps us to move away from the idea of domestic abuse as something that happens in incidents. There may be specific incidents that occur within that pattern of behaviour, but coercive control is a kind of ongoing system of behaviour, really, that victims will experience. It's a range of acts that create dependency on the person. It's all about kind of subordinating the victims.

That's the kind of controlling bit, and often involves, as I said, those rules and regulations where there are kind of those either explicit or unspoken consequences if those rules are broken, and that's the kind of coercive bit. So perpetrators use this to limit a victim's space for action. It's all about kind of ownership and entitlement at the root of kind of the perpetrator's behaviour. It's the most common context in which women experience domestic abuse, and it's also incredibly dangerous. We started off talking about kind of women and the way that society functions and the inequality between men and women, and coercive control really plays into those inequalities. Kind of the way that society works, the way that women are positioned as caregivers, facilitates coercive control. So it makes it easier and seem more natural, as we've said, for men's behaviour to be positioned or seen as being kind of caring and considerate, and you don't need to work, you can stay at home and look after the children. And for some people, that is an incredibly positive choice for them. For other people, it is a way of limiting a woman's ability to function in the world. So isolation is a really big part of this pattern. So people who cause harm will use various behaviours that seek to kind of really restrict a person's world. So this might be causing division with friends or family or saying, oh, I don't think that person's really a great influence, or planting seeds of doubt or putting kind of misinformation out there amongst friends and family that then create a sense of division. So as we've said, many of these behaviours really fly under the radar and may be made to seem harmless and often become supported by the wider community because it appears kind of innocuous. So for victims, this might mean that they don't see this behaviour as domestic abuse. They might see it as kind of pseudo-caring or attentive. And we very often see that particularly at the start of relationships where you've probably heard of the term love bombing, where people who cause harm will shower somebody with ridiculous amounts of kind of attention and really lavish them with gifts and make them feel special and unique. And that is part of a pattern of creating dependence on somebody. And what we know can occur is that this pattern will repeat. So if a person who causes harm takes things too far and they risk the victim maybe thinking, I'm not sure if this is right, this behaviour is getting a bit serious, they will then go back to the love bombing stage to kind of win that person over again. And they will, you know, say, this is never going to happen again, it was just a one-off, and shower them with kind of apologies and kind of take them back to that kind of, I think, historically been called kind of the honeymoon phase of a relationship. But it's all part of a pattern of control. Perpetrators also may try and control professionals or other people that are kind of involved in a person's life. They're often very plausible. I think I might have missed my notes on one of the slides, but there is no such thing as a typical victim. There's no such thing as a typical perpetrator. They are not kind of the monsters that are painted in kind of the media. They are everyday people. You sit next to on the bus, you sit next to in the office. So their ability to manipulate will go further than just in that household situation. One thing we need to consider with honour-based abuse as well is that a person may not have the same level of freedom as other people, so they may be really heavily policed in their home. They might not be able to leave their home effectively, kind of kept prisoner. And so that makes it additionally kind of hard to be able to reach out for support. I wanted to mention stalking specifically, and this is another behaviour that occurs within the context of domestic abuse. And despite what we see in Hollywood, which paints a very kind of romantic picture of somebody pursuing somebody obsessively, actually, stalking is incredibly serious behaviour and leads to incredibly dangerous outcomes, often. So it's really important that we understand that if there is stalking present, that's a really high-risk indicator and we should be taking that incredibly seriously. The mnemonic there for is, so if somebody's saying to you, this is what's going on, and if in their description you can tell that the behaviour is kind of fixated, obsessed, unwanted, and repeated, then you're looking at stalking taking place. So honour-based abuse, I've mentioned a couple of times, so, and this is another area, a bit like stalking, that we don't really deal with very well in this country. It's often being positioned as something that exists only within global majority communities, but that's certainly not the case. We see honour-based abuse taking place within communities that are based on Christian beliefs as well and taking place within kind of white communities. So honour-based abuse is all centred around the sense of an honour code. So that often dictates that women, as well as men, must follow rules that are set, often at the discretion of men, and often feeds into kind of hierarchical structures within families, within kind of wider family groups, as well as within kind of communities. And those codes are really determined and interpreted by those kind of elder males, often. If somebody is seen as breaking those rules or thinking about breaking those rules, then this is often seen as kind of destroying the good name of the family and deserving of punishment. And those decisions are often at the discretion of the male relatives. So it's an unwritten code of conduct. It ties into concepts of shame and the idea that a family's name would be brought into disrepute if the code is broken. Victims from these groups or communities may face additional barriers in reporting the abuse. As we said, they may be kind of policed in their home. The community around them will uphold these codes that mean there may be nobody safe to go and speak to. And all of this is really founded in traditional notions of patriarchy, stereotypes around men must behave this way and women must behave that way. So victims are often really highly policed and their behaviour is really highly policed. The reason I talk about honour-based abuse, aside from trying to dispel some of the myths that it only occurs within global majority groups, is that the outcomes from honour-based abuse, again, are incredibly serious. And we do see families killing their family members. We see communities supporting the killing of family members. We see women within those families covering up and supporting the actions. So it is incredibly serious. And so whereas with kind of traditional domestic abuse where you may have one perpetrator and one or a number of victims, actually with honour-based abuse, there may be multiple perpetrators involved. So the kind of impact for victims is that often they have to leave their family altogether. So they have to kind of dis...

Relocate themselves from their community and so they can never go back because the risk to them is so serious. So has incredibly devastating consequences for them. Okay on to topic two. Strap in guys. Domestic abuse in the church. So my animation didn't work. What does the Bible say? Can anyone think about, have you heard domestic abuse talked about in the church? Have you heard a sermon on it? Have you heard it be part of teachings? Have you done any devotional series that are about gender inequality or domestic abuse? So if we go back to those original statistics and what I just said about you could be sat on the bus next to somebody who is somebody who causes harm in their relationships. Equally you could be sat next to somebody in church who causes harm in their relationships. You could be sat next to somebody who is living within a domestic abuse situation. So we can kind of quite confidently assert that based on how prevalent domestic abuse is. What's harder to say though, oh there we go, it's gonna do it now. What does the Bible say about the oppression of women? What does it say about domestic abuse and sexual violence? Can anybody recall any Bible stories that deal with this? So perhaps your experience of church as it sounds previously has been perhaps a space of double standards, mixed messages. Perhaps your experience of church has been one where male voices are centred over female voices. Male dominance and patriarchal structures are historically very embedded within the way that the church has operated. And historically the sanctity of marriage has often been positioned ahead of the safety of women and children. And those are really, I think it's really important that we acknowledge that that is the kind of history that the church has had in any way kind of relating to this topic. And I know many people that have been harmed through some of those teachings or who have stayed in abusive situations because of the way that the church has responded to them. Lost my mouse again, sorry guys. I don't believe that is God's vision for us. I don't believe it's God's vision for our relationships and how we live our lives in our communities. So the patriarchal structures that underpin male violence have been prevalent in the church. And rather than modeling our church on some of the Bible's most faith-filled characters, so the woman who bore Jesus, the brave women who witnessed his death and were the first to witness his resurrection, the church has instead tended to model a culture that has maintained the oppression of women and girls. You may have heard more preachings around wives submit to your husbands than deconstructing some quite horrific examples of gender-based violence in the Bible. So for example, the sexual violence and forced pregnancy of Hagar by Abraham, or Judges 19, where there is horrendous violence depicted. There is towards a kind of an unnamed woman. She's not even worthy of being named, who is, I think she's depicted as a Levite concubine. And that is all we hear about her, except for the way that she is subjected to some of the most horrendous violence. And as a church, we really shouldn't be shying away from those texts. We need to reckon with them. We need to reconsider how some of the historical readings of those texts have sought to excuse or explain the violence of men and attribute blame to the sinfulness of women. So the woman at the well, there has been a lot of focus on that little bit of the passage that talks about her five husbands or being in five relationships and that indicating that she is kind of a fallen woman, rather than the way that Jesus speaks to her and does not judge and sees her as a person worthy of God's love. So in not acknowledging the violence towards women in the Bible, we perpetuate the invisibility of victims today. So if we are approaching how we read the Bible through an ethical framework, so we're reading to try to understand how we should be living our lives through God's vision, then this should challenge us to consider who we choose to see and who we choose not to see. So we can't say that we care about justice whilst ignoring 51% of the global population. Equally, we can't care about justice and fight for responses that only support white women's experiences of domestic abuse. So we often see women in the Bible depicted as being in kind of supporting roles rather than main character roles kind of throughout the Old and New Testament. But their inclusion in the Bible tells us so much about God's vision for the world. Whilst we read about a culture that was patriarchal, that is of the world and not of God. And I really believe it's not, it's not at all God's vision for our relationships. So if we believe we are called to love as we are loved, to set captives free and promote human flourishing, if we believe we're all one in Jesus, then we must be part of the solution and not part of the problem. So that's takeaway two for today. This is the challenge for us in this church body. We are called to be part of the solution and not the problem. And we need to think about what that looks like for Vineyard Church. So as I've said, church has a poor history of responding to abuse when really, given the gospel message, we should be ahead of the curve. We should be the ones demanding an end to gender-based violence and fighting for the freedom of women and girls. So we have a chance to do it better. And for me, that's really about making sure that this is part of our kind of focus, our mission on social justice. What's on the screen is some research that was carried out in 2021. And it was based on an online survey which focused on a Christian faith context and explored experiences of domestic abuse. And the slide describes some of the effects of the abuse in terms of victims' kind of relationship to their faith, which for many, it had a negative impact. They felt isolated from church. They felt isolated from God. But there were others who said that actually through their domestic abuse experience, actually their faith was strengthened and it didn't have that negative effect. The research highlights that many people were disclosing within their church setting. They were disclosing to people who were part of that kind of faith community. But only 18% said that the response that they had helped to positively change their situation. And many reported unhelpful responses, which involved kind of support going towards the perpetrator, victim blaming and not being believed about what they've experienced. And then finally, the research also highlights that victims, as well as experiencing coercive and controlling behavior, also experienced forms of spiritual abuse. So I think about 60% reported spiritual abuse being part of that controlling and coercive behavior. And a really high proportion of perpetrators specifically using Christian teachings as a way to further their control. So thinking about how abuse can be used within a faith situation, whilst it can be a source of support and comfort for a victim, a source of strength, we know that perpetrators can manipulate or exploit that faith. And this abuse can have really deep damaging impact on victims. So it might include things like the requirement

Or secrecy and silence, so really kind of hiding what's going on in a relationship. Marital rape and the use of religious scripture to justify that. Does anybody know when marital rape became a criminal offence? So that's rape that occurs within a marriage. Yeah, so 1991. So in my lifetime, when I first heard that, my first realisation was, when my parents got married, this wasn't recognised in law as a thing. And sadly today, there are still countries that don't have this as legislation. There are countries that have this as legislation, but accept that it's what happens in marriages. So it's, yeah, it's still a huge, a huge issue. We also see things like coercion to conform or control through the use of sacred or religious texts. So this might be kind of using theological justifications for abuse. And at the start, we were talking about the headship and the man as the kind of head of the family and that being kind of a biblically given way that a family should operate. Another thing that a perpetrator might do is prevent a victim from practising their faith. So restricting their ability to pray, restricting their ability to worship or be part of a faith community. So if we go back to where we started at the beginning of this section, thinking about our understanding of how God wants us to live and recall that this harmful behaviour is all about power and control, this is not God's vision for our relationships where we're all one in Jesus. So it's really imperative that church is a part of the solution and not part of the problem. So, our final topic, how do we respond? So before we can respond, we need to be able to identify or have an inkling that something is not quite right and there may be something that we need to do. As we said earlier, when Ben asked the question about money and how you divide money in a relationship, not all warning signs will be domestic abuse. However, in safeguarding and in domestic abuse, we talk about the one chance rule and that's really important. You may be the only person that asks the right question at the right time, that creates the right space for somebody to say, Oh, actually, this is what's going on for me and it's not good. As I've said, there's no such thing as a typical victim. So if we think about those kind of physical, emotional, behavioural impacts of abuse, what signs might we notice? Yeah, so changes in behaviour, changes in the kind of pattern of how they live their life. Yeah. So you might notice that someone's really struggling with money or doesn't have much access to money. Somebody might present as being ill quite often. Trauma has effects on our physical health. Someone might say, Oh, I'd really like to do that. I just need to check that I'm allowed to do that. So asking permission, which is different from saying, I need to let my husband know that I'd like to do this. It's seeking permission. Regularly canceling appointments. You might see somebody is overly anxious around their partner. They might present as being really overly anxious to please their partner. They may create extreme levels of privacy around their relationship. They may overtly make excuses about their partner's behaviour. Yeah, absolutely. And knowing the signs of trauma and how people respond to trauma. So are there food issues that appear? Are there substance reliances that appear? Is somebody drinking a bit more than they would normally drink as a way to cope with what they're experiencing? So it's, yeah, having an eye out for kind of all of those different things that might change and might indicate there's something going on for this person. So how then do we respond? So our kind of my caveat with this section is there's no expectation that anybody will be holding levels of risk around individuals. So please do not hold that stuff on your own. Domestic abuse requires a specialist response. We have people in this county who are highly trained to be able to manage high levels of risk and make decisions around safety and planning for people that are experiencing domestic abuse. And we need to be really careful that we don't try to fix things. But this is about making sure that those early conversations, those opportunities to come alongside somebody, notice that there's something going on and help them to access the support that they need can be done in the best possible way. And that's got to start with building trust. And we can only do that if we start with kind of an approach that's kind of believing. Safety is paramount. So before you go into a conversation, you need to consider, is this the right time and place to have this conversation? Is it safe to ask this person some of these questions? So don't ever do anything that you think might put the victim in danger if the perpetrator's present. I know this all sounds very obvious, but it happens. If the perpetrator's present and you notice something, do nothing then, please. Give no sign that you are kind of suspecting that there's something going on unless there's a need to call the police because there's kind of immediate danger for individuals. My mouse keeps going over to that screen. So the best way to respond is not diving straight in with a, are you a victim of domestic abuse question? But you want to open up the conversation gently. So you might ask some kind of really gentle open questions like, how are things with your partner? Is there anything you want to talk about? I'm worried you're upset or there's something going on. Is there anything that you'd like to talk about? And you can then follow that up with a more direct question. Like, is there anything going on in your relationship that's causing you to be frightened? Is there anything that's happening that's making you feel upset or scared? We need to avoid inappropriate questions or questions that could be perceived as victim blaming. So why does your partner behave like that? Or what provoked them to do that? All of that kind of takes the responsibility away from the person causing harm. Yeah. And that happens all the time. I go to professional meetings where people are discussed and you will hear that said, Oh, the neighbours haven't reported any issues despite the police turning up because there's a blazing row going on. They all say, he's a lovely chap. And this is how perpetrators present and how they manipulate the people around them is that they are often very charming and they are often, you know, very pleasant to the people around them, except for the people that they're victimising. We also need to remember that victims might not recognise their experience or use the language of domestic abuse. And for some people, it takes quite a bit of time for them to be able to build up that understanding that the behaviours that they're experiencing are abuse. We need to listen to what they're telling us. I normally try to kind of repeat back what's someone saying to me as a way of kind of checking that you're understanding, but it's also a way for them to know that you're hearing them, you're hearing what they're telling you.

And that leads us on to the need for validation. As we said, victims might not recognise what they're experiencing as abuse. They might think something's not quite right and this is, you know, I'm feeling scared or is this the way this relationship should be? But they will often doubt themselves. They will often feel like they are not going to be believed. And so how we validate victims in their experience is really important. So takeaway three for today is that we need victims to explicitly hear that they are believed and for us to create a safe space here for survivors of domestic abuse. That starts with us taking a believing approach. They're also likely to have been told by the perpetrator, no one's gonna believe you, or the perpetrator will have been planting seeds of doubt about a victim across family and friends. Oh, you know how she gets very upset about things or, oh, she's just, you know, I think she's, we need to go and talk to the doctor because I think there's maybe some signs of dementia going on there. And the lengths that victims will go to, sometimes going to the doctor and getting medical investigations underway to undermine so that if a victim does disclose, they're less likely to be believed. And women's mental health is regularly used against them in this way. The other thing that I wanted to mention is when we're talking to somebody who's experienced domestic abuse, they will be grappling with feelings of shame. Whilst shame is something internal and about our internal beliefs, it's also a tool of a system that oppresses. So it's something that silences, it's something that isolates, and it's something that tells us that we are not worthy. We're really fortunate though, because we can counter that with the truth that our worth is freely given by God. So we have such a powerful tool against the way that shame operates in society. And speaking as a victim of male violence who has had 20 years of shame eating me from the inside, it's such a powerful truth to know. And it's liberating. So, let me catch my breath. How do we create a safe space at GVC? These are some practical kind of suggestions that have come, some of it come from some research, and some of it some conversations that have been taking place within GVC and outside of GVC. So the start of how we create a safe space for survivors of domestic abuse at GVC is about that culture of safety rooted in believing people. We can also promote that culture by talking more about domestic abuse, by building that understanding of domestic abuse in the church, and being honest about the way that the Bible has been used by the church to maintain systems of control historically. So some other actions that we are plotting and thinking about for GVC and beyond is thinking about how we establish a real network of churches across the city that are passionate about creating safe spaces in our city for people that have experienced harm and abuse. So how we can create churches that are safe, healing places for people that have experienced trauma. Another thing we could consider is thinking about becoming a restored beacon church. So restored are an organisation that work across churches in the UK and their beacon model is about working alongside a church, embedding really good training and policies and solid teaching about domestic abuse. And that being part of a network of churches that say that they are kind of outwardly committed to tackling domestic abuse and being a safe space. So I think it's Leeds Vineyard Church is the one vineyard church that's a restored beacon church. So many of these ways would go, many of these kind of opportunities would go some way into us being able to say we are a church that does not tolerate abuse, that we are a church that wants to provide safe refuge for survivors where we can demonstrate God's love by walking alongside people in their recovery from abuse. So these are our specialist services. In the county, they work with survivors and perpetrators. So Fear Free are our perpetrator service. So they do behaviour change work with people who cause harm in their relationships. GDAS will work with anybody who is a victim of domestic abuse, whatever your gender. They only work with people 16 plus, but Street Gloucestershire are an organisation that work with people who either experience harm or cause harm in teenage relationships. So they support from both sides. So those are a range of our kind of local specialist services if that is helpful. So to recap, because we're a quarter past, our three takeaways from today. Takeaway one, domestic abuse is about power and control. Number two, we're called as Christians, I think, to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. And takeaway three, our first step into that is to begin to create safe spaces starting by believing victims. And this is my final slide, which is just my prayer for victims of domestic abuse. And thank you. Thank you so much for coming and listening. I know it's not an easy subject to sit and talk about, but it, yeah, it is important. Yeah. And thank you, Lilith and Ben, for like your generation, I think, are gonna be a generation that takes this knowledge into your adulthood in a way that my generation didn't. So, and that fills me with hope that you guys will be safe in the relationships that you have.